MUSIC REVIEW : GUTIERREZ PLAYS CHOPIN AT BOWL

A number of variables, including humidity, atmospheric pressure and, one supposes, air pollution, contribute to the success or distortion of sound dispersal at Hollywood Bowl. Distortion occurs regularly, and can sometimes also be exacerbated by human interference. Success happens too, but less frequently, and then apparently by chance.

After a poor beginning, the sound-dispersal system at the Bowl worked wonderfully Thursday night, the result perhaps of enlightened manipulation and natural phenomena.

One heard the Los Angeles Philharmonic sounding like itself on a good night; one enjoyed, almost as indoors, a Steinway piano played masterfully by Horacio Gutierrez. And, with the considerable help of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, one rediscovered Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Gutierrez seems to grow from strength to strength. At 36 (he will turn 37 a month from Sunday), his authority, musicality and technical prowess appear to be entering their prime. His playing of Chopin’s F-minor Concerto, in which he was assisted most smoothly by Tilson Thomas and our Philharmonic, achieved a level of articulation few pianists of any generation reach.

In its naturalness, fluency, abundant detail and Romantic ambiance, this performance had a quality of singing and communication that evoked memories of Jakob Gimpel playing the same work back in the 1960s, or Guiomar Novaes and Artur Rubinstein in the 1950s. In all cases, the Chopin style was unmistakable, and complete. The only missing element in Gutierrez’s reading was a soupcon of playfulness in the finale.

In the surrounding works, Brahms’ “Tragic” Overture and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Tilson Thomas gave probing treatment to each composer’s inner lines while illuminating the total work with a sweeping aggressiveness.

For Bartok’s masterpiece, such an approach ignored the work’s usual function as the occasion for virtuoso display; instead, Tilson Thomas engaged the listener by concentrating on the emotional life here described in sound: the bitterness and pathos in the first and third movements, the shadowed, anguished jokiness in the second and fourth, and the triumph in the finale.

Attendance: 8,928.